I've been thinking today about two of my obsessions; aviaries and green roofs. The starting spark for the green roofs was a rather confusing section in Gardener's World from James Hitchmough, who had clearly had a very substantial interview cut right down to exclude ... well, anyway. Here's some pictures from Prof Hitchmough -- a specialist in urban planting who researches into hardy, frost-resistant dry climate plants that can help reduce the urban heat island effect (an increasingly serious problem as a result of human-caused climate change) while being robust and attractive enough to be acceptable to municipal gardeners. This is him studying plants in the wild - they're not planted.
The flat roofs of my office would be vastly prettier with these on them, but there are lots of UK plants that would also do the job. Chickweed, Sow Thistle, Knotweed, Stonewort and many others that would be totally horticulturally unacceptable as when we look at them, we see litter. and reach for the hoe. NO, green roofs should be pretty, and look like this:
That pretty picture is from a long-abandoned Tumblr, where I was clicking around for April-fool related reasons. The aviaries happened because of Instagram and BotanyGeek's image of a Ballardian Glasshouse deep in the jungle - or rather, as he elucidated in his comments, in a the world's biggest bird park.
But is Jurong's Waterfall Aviary really the biggest aviary? Or is it Birds of Eden in South Africa? Or it is India's unique and parrot-mad SGS Shukavara? All of them show only the most tantalising, tiny glimpses of their extraordinary landscaping and planting, instead showing off the flower-like beauty of their many birds; you have to intuit that from image searches and scavenges of the backgrounds of tourist shots, looking behind the birds, the smiling couples and the happy families, to try and understand what makes the enclosures sing.
This is all fantasy-land for me, of course; see below for the closest I get to exotic birds and green roofs. Moss and blackbirds are both pretty good things though.
The flat roofs of my office would be vastly prettier with these on them, but there are lots of UK plants that would also do the job. Chickweed, Sow Thistle, Knotweed, Stonewort and many others that would be totally horticulturally unacceptable as when we look at them, we see litter. and reach for the hoe. NO, green roofs should be pretty, and look like this:
That pretty picture is from a long-abandoned Tumblr, where I was clicking around for April-fool related reasons. The aviaries happened because of Instagram and BotanyGeek's image of a Ballardian Glasshouse deep in the jungle - or rather, as he elucidated in his comments, in a the world's biggest bird park.
But is Jurong's Waterfall Aviary really the biggest aviary? Or is it Birds of Eden in South Africa? Or it is India's unique and parrot-mad SGS Shukavara? All of them show only the most tantalising, tiny glimpses of their extraordinary landscaping and planting, instead showing off the flower-like beauty of their many birds; you have to intuit that from image searches and scavenges of the backgrounds of tourist shots, looking behind the birds, the smiling couples and the happy families, to try and understand what makes the enclosures sing.
This is all fantasy-land for me, of course; see below for the closest I get to exotic birds and green roofs. Moss and blackbirds are both pretty good things though.
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